Illinois governor Pat Quinn is looking to the heavens to justify raising the minimum wage to $10.65 per hour in his state.

“There’s a principle as old as the Bible that if you work 40 hours a week you shouldn’t have to live in poverty,” the Illinois Democrat told MSNBC on Friday. “This is a fundamental principle that we want to carry out across our state and indeed across our country.” (The 40-hour workweek, to be precise, is an innovation of the Industrial Revolution.)

Quinn, who has among the lowest approval ratings in the country for a state executive, won Illinois’s Democratic primary earlier this week (at one point faced a challenge from former White House official Bill Daley, who dropped out), and is expected to have a competitive race against Republican nominee Bruce Rauner.